That was before he realized that Fulk de Savaric—another traitor, another man who ought to have been by his side! — had somehow managed to bring his company around behind him. There had been some real danger there, and Ademar was snapping urgent commands when one of his captains pointed triumphantly upwards to the west, and the king of Gorhaut, looking there, had felt his choler recede, eased and cooled by something near to joy. He had never been afraid, he was not a man inclined to fears, but with the sight of the Miraval corans on that ridge beneath the banner of Gorhaut, Ademar laughed aloud, tasting the sweetness to come.
He had a few moments to think that way, to watch the well-trained men of Duke Urté start smoothly down the slope, gaining speed, bringing the end of this war with them and the final exaltation of Gorhaut.
Then it all went wrong; wildly, desperately wrong.
There was one moment, when Urté de Miraval whipped his warhorse straight past the corans of Savaric, when Ademar did know fear—just for an instant. Then he felt the impact of those thundering Miraval horsemen as they smashed into the rear of his ranks, driving men back before them like so many helpless children.
Now, buffeted in the midst of a nightmare chaos, rage is foaming like a river in flood through the king of Gorhaut. Ademar hears his High Elder trumpet his call to the god and he curses in his heart the very name of Galbert de Garsenc who has brought him to this, who persuaded him that the duke of Miraval, whose overtures to them in the past few days were direct and explicit, was a necessary man to enlist in their cause, to act as first regent of Arbonne after their conquest.
It was a trap. It is clear now that everything Urté did was a trap, and they are in the jaws of it, between the corans of Talair and Miraval, with Fulk de Savaric and the renegades of Garsenc coming hard against them. Ademar lashes his horse westward, screaming in fury, and as men fall back before him he comes swiftly up to the man he needs to kill now, right now, immediately, before this battle turns hopelessly against them. He is aware, vaguely, that his own corans have also fallen back, that a ring of men has formed around the two of them, as if even in the midst of war there is a sense that this combat must take place. And so Ademar of Gorhaut begins his second single-challenge of this day.
Wordlessly, for he is beyond words now and none could be heard in any case, he swings his sword in a huge, sweeping arc towards the helmeted head of the duke of Miraval. He misses, as Urté, unexpectedly quick for a man of his size and past sixty years of age, ducks beneath the blade. A second later Ademar rocks wildly in the saddle as he absorbs a colossal blow on his own helm. He feels the world go momentarily black. His helmet has been knocked askew; he cannot see. There is a sticky, warm running of blood down the side of his face.
Roaring like a man beset by furies, Ademar hurls away his shield and rips his helm off with both hands, feeling a tearing and then a fierce pain at his left ear. He throws the helmet at de Miraval's face and then the king of Gorhaut follows that up with the hardest blow with a sword he has ever delivered in all his days.
The descending blade catches the armour of the duke just where it shields neck and shoulder and it drives straight down through the mesh, biting deeply into flesh. Ademar sees, through the blurring and darkening of his own vision, how the duke of Miraval lurches heavily over to one side in his saddle, and knowing the cursed, deceiving old man is falling, is as good as dead already, he rips free his blade, nonetheless, to blot him out of life.
The king of Gorhaut never does see the arrow that kills him.
The arrow that comes down out of the empty heavens above to take him in the eye—exactly as his own father was killed two years ago among the ice and the piled bodies by Iersen Bridge.
The king of Gorhaut, dead instantly, never does see that the shaft of that arrow is a deep crimson hue, like blood. Nor does he ever realize, as others do soon after, coming up to where the dead king lies on the ground beside the mortally wounded figure of Urté de Miraval, that the feathers with which that arrow has been fletched are—a thing without known precedent—the feathers of an owl, crimson-hued as well.
Men see these things and cannot understand them, nor can they comprehend whence that terrifying, death-dealing arrow might have been loosed, to have fallen, as it truly seems, straight down upon the king from the sky. Corans in both armies can be seen to be making the warding sign against darkness and the unknown.
The king of Gorhaut is dead of a crimson arrow fallen from the heavens, fletched with the feathers of an owl. Even the warriors of Gorhaut know what bird is sacred to Rian. The tale of an immortal goddess's vengeance for her servants defiled and slain begins to sweep immediately across the valley. It will not stop there. The story has a long way to travel. Such tales, of the deaths of kings, always do.
After that it became easy, in fact. Easier than it ought to have been, Blaise thought. At Iersen Bridge, King Duergar had died yet Gorhaut had still prevailed on a bitter field. The death of a king need not mean utter disarray among the ranks of his army.
That afternoon, though, it did. Blaise could have offered many reasons why, and any and all of those reasons might have been a part of it, but the truth—brilliantly clear in the afternoon light—was that the army of Gorhaut was undone from the time Urté de Miraval appeared against them and that red arrow came down to kill their king.
Blaise, battling in towards Bertran, began to recognize individual men in both armies nearer to the centre of the fighting. Sunset, he had said to Ademar. He had been denied that battle after all. Looking around, he remembered that there was someone else on this field he wanted for his own. Then he saw that man, some distance away, and realized that this, too, was going to be denied him.
Bertran de Talair came up to the Portezzan, Borsiard d'Andoria, on a tummock of grass in the midst of the sideslipping centre of the battle. It was clear that words were exchanged, but Blaise was too far away to hear them. Then he watched Bertran, who had set out on the road of a fighter more than twenty years ago after Aelis de Miraval had died in her husband's castle, dispatch the lord of Andoria with a precision that almost made a mockery of the notion of single combat. Two blows on the forehand, a feint, and then, slipping past the parry, a straight-ahead thrust that took Borsiard in the throat. It was more an execution than a duel, and when it was over Blaise's first thought was that Lucianna had just been widowed again.
His second thought, as he saw the Andorians begin, predictably, to throw down their weapons and hastily submit themselves as prisoners to the nearest of Bertran's men, was that he had something to do now that was going to be harder than any combat had been. He looked quickly around for Rudel and realized that his friend was no longer by his side. He had no time to wonder about that. Even as he watched, the battle of Lake Dierne was becoming a slaughter.
And he had to stop it. Stop it, even though the men of Arbonne could see the severed heads spitted on pikes at the back of the Gorhaut ranks, could still see what a hideous ruin had been made of the singer named Aurelian, and would all be carrying within them anguished images of women burning through the north of their land. They would not be inclined to clemency and moderation in this moment when certain defeat had turned into victory. Every man in the army of Arbonne would know what his fate and that of his family would have been had Gorhaut triumphed here.